No doubt all of us have less-than-fond memories of recent or more distant instances in which we’ve seen someone stronger who unfairly and cruelly intimidated, ridiculed or otherwise took advantage of someone weaker. Perhaps you were once a victim of bullying, or even a perpetrator.

By their very nature, Facebook (www.facebook.com) and similar social networking sites are a way to share private matters with others — news of yourself and family, opinions, photos, links to other sites and so on. But such sites have to tread carefully to avoid stepping on the toes of their more privacy-conscious users.

The free video sharing website YouTube (www.youtube.com) just celebrated its fifth birthday, and looking at where it has come from and where it is now can shed some interesting light on where video may be headed.

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names,” according to an old Chinese proverb. This isn’t always easy in the world of personal computers and the Internet, where new words seem to sprout as frequently as security software updates.

The concept of privacy is a fascinating one. It has evolved over time, and different countries regard it differently. Online, it plays out in some interesting ways. The bottom line is you may not be protecting what you personally regard as private matters to the extent that you think.

What any given person regards as a great computer-related product or service is highly subjective. Business people, teenagers, stay-at-home moms and retired folks typically have different perspectives, as do Windows diehards, Mac fanatics, and Linux heads.

Just as personal computers have become more versatile over the years, so have printers. Multifunction printers combine printing with copying, scanning and faxing in one unit, and sometimes phone, voice mail, and e-mail sending functions as well.

Every time Microsoft, developer of the world’s most popular personal computer operating systems, comes up with a new version of Windows, computer users wrestle with the question of whether they should upgrade.